Worth noting that there are different popular package managers (apt, yum, etc) and init systems (systemd, upstart, etc) and this is going to drive the majority of differences in distros apart from aesthetics in window managers.
I tend to recommend ubuntu, or at least debian based for consumers and desktops. This is especially true for those wanting the widest support.
For business and gov servers its often constrained by regulations and approved software lists.
Thank you both for the input. I still have a lot of research to do before I try.
I only own a shitty laptop so not a ton of hardware options!
I'm also (very slowly) learning Python on the side. I'm assuming any option would be fine for coding/development environments, right? Probably putting the cart before the horse here..
FWIW, my development machine is a 13 year old laptop with 8GB of RAM and it works fast enough with Ubuntu MATE, a trimmed down Linux Distro derivative of Ubuntu using the lighter weight marco window manager instead of the newer gnome
I use it for my Python development of Nodeyez using VS Code as the IDE.
For systems with limited resources consider distros like Ubuntu Mate, Linux Mint, Manjaro
I run a lubuntu distro on an old netbook. Cant do video editing but it's great for office stuff
